Earth Eternal Overview

Earth Eternal is a persistent world browser based MMORPG game published by a company called Spark Media. It’s one of the only ‘persistent world’ games aside from RuneScape and is actually a strong contender to possibly overthrowing RuneScape as the most popular browser game. One thing that’s worth mentioning right away is that Earth Eternal doesn’t feel at all like a browser game. It feels a lot more like a client based game inside of a browser – as it has more features and better graphics than many client based games. Both graphically and gameplay wise Earth Eternal feels a lot like World of Warcraft. There’s no doubt the game received a lot of its inspiration from Blizzard’s enormously popular title, as nearly everything from interface to combat mechanics feel as if they were taken right out of WoW. To be fair though, this isn’t exactly a bad thing – as World of Warcraft is arguably the best MMORPG out there – so copying certain features from it is actually a good idea. Besides, games like Runes of Magic and Gates of Andaron also copied World of Warcraft quite a bit and they’re both successful games. Enough WoW talk though – the fact is Earth Eternal is 0ne of the best looking browser games on the market and is well worth checking out. The game has 22 playable races and four classes. The four playable classes are:

Knight - Knights are extremely capable melee oriented fighters who can easily stand toe to toe with the game’s toughest foes. They are the only class that can wear plate mail and wield extremely powerful two-handed weapons. No other class can absorb damage as well as the knight can.

Rogue - Rogues are extremely powerful damage oriented melee classes that can easily out damage even the mightiest of knights in close quarters combat. They are quick and capable in close quarthers combat, but prefer to strike at their enemies from the shadows. They are proficient with daggers, claws and katars.

Mage - They are the masters of spellborn combat. They only have access to the lightest of armors in the game, but they more than compensate for this with their extremely powerful spells which can target multiple enemies at once. They primarily use wands in combat and have by far the most amount of fire power in the game.

Druid - The druid is a Staff Wielding, Bow-Using, Pet summoning character. They have the Broadest range of capabilities of any class. The druid can both wear the second heaviest type of armor in the game (Chainmail) and fight capably and fearsomely with their staves and spears in close quarters combat as well as attack from range with bows. They are also masters of both life and death magic, meaning they can summon a range of creatures to aid them in combat as well as use both defensive and offensive magic.

Earth Eternal Screenshots

Earth Eternal Featured Video

Full Review

Earth Eternal Full Review

By Omer Altay

Earth Eternal is a revolutionary new 3D browser game published by Sparkplay. Aside from perhaps RuneScape – it’s the only browser game out there with a substantial amount of content and actual persistent world gameplay, which instantly makes Earth Eternal one of the most in-depth browser games out there. The term ‘browser game’ is usually associated with lower tier text based / strategy games, and this is mostly true because most browser games are simplistic in nature and tend to have low quality graphics. Heck, even RuneScape, which is considered by many as the best browser game of all time, has fairly lousy graphics (Even after the new HD update). Personally, I’ve never been too fond of browser games in general because they could never keep my attention for longer than a week at a time. Strategy games like Travian and Space Invasion are fun, but I’ve never been able to play them for longer than a week – simply because they’re extremely repetitive. Earth Eternal is one of the only browser games that I’ve actually been able to play for extended periods of time without getting burnt out – and that’s probably because Earth Eternal more closely resembles a client based game than a browser game.

Whaaaat? A Client Based Game?

Technically speaking, Earth Eternal is a browser based game – as the game runs off a browser, but graphically speaking the game looks more like a client based game than a browser one – as the graphics in Earth Eternal are quite good. To put the game’s graphics in context – they’re only slightly worse than the graphics in Gates of Andaron (4Story) and sort of like the graphics in World of Warcraft. The reason that Earth Eternal manages to pull off such great graphics in web browser is because the game does require one small download before the game actually launches – but the game doesn’t require much hard drive space on the computer. One enormous downside though of Earth Eternal’s top notch graphics is that players will need fairly modern computers to play the game smoothly. It’s one of the only browser games that demand over a gig of ram and a dedicated graphics card to play. Another downside of the game’s impressive graphics is that loading times, especially when first logging into the game, can take quite a while.

Awesome Customization

Aside from the graphics, one of the most impressive aspects of Earth Eternal is the game’s solid character customization options. Players can choose from 22 playable races from frog like Anura to the mountain dwelling Yeti. The fact that Earth Eternal has 22 playable races in and of itself is quite impressive as most games, both browser and client based, usually only have a handful. Even though the game has a boat load of unique races it’s worth mentioning that gameplay wise it makes zero difference which race a player picks – as they all have the same attributes and skills. The developers designed the game this way because it allows players to choose any race they like without penalizing them for specializing in a certain class. Personally, I feel that this is an awesome idea as there won’t be any balance issues in regards to all the different races and players have a lot of choices in how their character appears in the game. After choosing a race players are able to further customize their character by adjusting things like skin and hair color as well as numerous other facial features. It’s amazing how a browser based game like Earth Eternal can offer so many interesting character customization options while most client based games can’t.

After finishing up race selection and several other customization options – players will be prompted to select a class. Earth Eternal currently features only four playable classes: Knight, Rogue, Druid and Mage. One thing worth mentioning right away is that players aren’t limited to only selecting class specific skills like in most MMORPGs. Players can choose to learn many special skills that their class normally wouldn’t have access to – which essentially allows players to build their character in nearly limitless different ways. One example of this is that I can use the ability points I gained on my Knight for leveling up on training the ‘Flame Spear’ skill which is actually a mage skill. This means that every class has access to nearly 100 different skills and spells. Obviously it would make more sense for a player to focus on one set of skills rather than being weak in many different skills – but the fact that the game allows such level of customization is quite impressive.

Starting Out

Players start their adventure in Earth Eternal on Mushroom Isle – a small tutorial zone where newbies can quickly learn how to play the game. Anyone who has ever played an MMORPG won’t really benefit from this tutorial as Earth Eternal is actually a really straight forward game. Luckily though, the tutorial can be completed in under five minutes. After completing the newbie zone – players will be thrown into the vast world of Earth Eternal. Luckily though – players will be given a lengthy quest chain right after completing the tutorial that should keep players busy until level 5 or so. One great thing about Earth Eternal is that there’s very little grind, as there are so many quests available in the game – it doesn’t make sense to stay in one area grinding when questing is much more efficient, especially since the quest locations / quest NPCs are clearly marked on the game’s mini map. One small complaint I have with the questing system is that there’s a LOT of running around – but this isn’t anything out of the ordinary in the free to play MMORPG realm. Perhaps one of Earth Eternal’s strongest points though is its solid gameplay.

Fluid Gameplay

One of the biggest complaints I have with most graphical browser games (Runescape, Dark Orbit, Deepolis, Etc.) is that they have clunky controls and aren’t fluid. Fortunately, the gameplay in Earth Eternal is extremely fluid and responsive. This is likely because the developers made Earth Eternal very similar to World of Warcraft. Anyone who has played WoW before and gives Earth Eternal a try should agree with me here as both games just ‘feel’ similar. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, in fact it’s a good thing. I personally love the graphics and gameplay mechanics of World of Warcraft – so I’m glad the folks over at Sparkplay decided to use a similar system.

To be fair though – Earth Eternal isn’t a complete WoW clone like Runes of Magic is – it does vary things up a bit. Combat for example is plays out a bit differently. Melee classes can perform their melee skills by using up ‘might points’ while spell casters can use magic with ‘Will Points’ – the more powerful a skill or spell is the more ‘points’ it consumes. Players have a maximum of 10 might and will points which regenerate rapidly after being used, but not fast enough for players to keep using their skills non-stop. It works the same way as ‘Energy’ does for a Rogue in World of Warcraft. My main point though in this paragraph is that the gameplay in Earth Eternal is remarkably fluid – especially for a browser game.

No Need to hit the Cash Shop

One aspect of Earth Eternal that I personally like a lot is that anyone who plays the game diligently enough can gain access to any item sold in the cash shop for real money. Sure it’s more convenient to pay for an item, but the fact that players can get cash shop items without paying is something very few games can boast about. This is all possible because of a little system in Earth Eternal called the ‘Credit Exchange’. Players can basically sell their credits to other players for gold and vice versa – so technically anyone who plays the game long enough to accumulate large amounts of gold will be able to exchange that gold for cash shop credits. I’d like to see other free to play MMORPGs adopt similar systems as games would be much more balanced and no one would be able to ‘complain’ about certain items being over powered if everyone has access to them without paying – even if the non paying route is extremely difficult.

Final Verdict – Great

Earth Eternal is a visually stunning 3D browser MMORPG like no other. It has extremely in depth character customization, remarkably fluid gameplay and a large game world to explore. Anyone looking for a new browser MMORPG to play should certainly check out Earth Eternal – as it’s one of the most innovative browser games out there. The game’s only real drawbacks are the occasional glitches and few playable classes.